steps. The hells of the spirit are
similar to the hells of earth, being like them the result of the
ignorance and perverted loves of animal man.

What hell more fearful than the hell of licentiousness? Yet it is merely
the animal side of the heaven of love.

Swedenborg discovered hells in spiritual existence, where the inmates
lived lives of prostitution. His statement concerning such hells is true.
Individuals who have lived such lives upon earth cannot suddenly be
transformed. Their habits become _spiritual diseases_ with them.

Now, as to marriage, the mere form does not make the wife different from
the courtezan, but her love exalts her above that condition. If she be
united to a man who is repulsive to her nature, and yet submits to his
embraces for the considerations of family, or home, or public opinion,
she is on the same plane with the courtezan.

It is a proposition generally believed, that there is a soul-mate for
every human being, and it is usually supposed that in the spirit world
those mates are found, and that those united there live together
inseparably. But as there exists in the spirit world the same states, the
same variety of progressive development among men and women as in this
world, so unions are formed there in which one soul develops beyond the
capacity of the other, and in such cases changes must ensue.

I will now speak of marriages more in detail.

In the summer land the union of the man with the woman occurs from very
similar causes to those which bring about like unions upon earth--the man
is drawn to the woman and the woman to the man through the operation of a
natural law. If instinct were not so impaired by the cultivation of the
external faculties, there would arise but little difficulty--on earth in
selecting partners adapted to each other. Considerations of wealth and
position are permitted to influence your selections rather than the idea
of congeniality and adaptability.

In spirit life this method is reversed, and the marriages formed there
are productive of greater happiness than those among men in the first
condition of life.

But as I have stated, marriage in the spirit world is not an indissoluble
bond. Some minds associate together in harmony and expand in the same
direction, and with these the union is permanent. I have seen such in the
spirit world,--beautiful and noble souls intertwined and aspiring
together.

There be others whose states and conditions after a