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had from external surroundings and effects. Let the heaven of the preachers of the Church be never so elegant and pretty, let its grandeur be never so imposing, let its residents be never so ravishing,-let it be all this and more, yet can it be conceived, or, in any way, imagined, that true joy can accrue to the soul from an abode in Olympus? All that comes from outside the self can only pass in through the media of senses, and, for that reason, can never be anything more or less than sensation. But, since sensations are not always pleasant, and since the most agreeable of them become sickening and tormenting when too often repeated, the state of the physical man, on his resurrection, in the heaven-world, would not secure for him even freedom from the liability to experience pain. Bliss is an emotion, which, as we have already shown, is the feeling of freedom from all desires, arising from the consciousness of fulness and perfection in one's own being, and quite independently of all considerations of surroundings, environment and locality. Hence, no outside agency, whether spiritual or material, can confer it on the soul, if it happen to be devoid of the right emotion in itself.
From the practical side of the question, also, it being obvious that the word of the theologian is not entitled to any greater credit than that of any other thinking being,, there arises the most important question of all as to the proof of the doctrine of redemption, as preached by the modern Church. When a man pays off a pledge, he becomes immediately entitled to the possession and enjoyment of the thing pledged, and may insist on its being restored to him at once.
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