The Asiatic race in burying its dead prepares the favorite food of the deceased, the fragrant tea, and the money so useful on earth.  Also slips of paper on which messages are written to departed friends are lighted at these burial ceremonies, and reduced to ashes, that the spirit of the text may be transmitted to their friends in the world of souls.

In these “Pagan rites,” as they are termed, we discern the workings of an intuitive belief that the spirit of man still retains the sensations, attributes, and desires which have accompanied it through life.

The ancient Greeks and Romans held similar opinions, likewise the Africans, Hindoos, and the Indians of North and South America.

By far the largest portion of mankind believe in a natural state hereafter, corresponding to their earth existence, but the European nations which are supposed to be advanced in science, art, and philosophical attainments beyond all the nations of the earth, have, in their speculations and in their efforts to penetrate the mysteries of the world of spirits, lost sight, of the natural and entered the supernatural, where they are surrounded by fogs, clouds, and ignes-fatui.

Now if these people are told that the spirit world is divided into states and continents, cities and towns, as is their own world (though under spirit appellations), they would scoff at the statement.

But as mankind has a natural love of locality, and as congenial minds will select similar locations, adapted to their ideas of beauty and comfort, the result is that spirit inhabitants unite and form cities and towns as on earth.  Thus combining, they must have some points of interest to occupy their minds, and as they still possess their power of construction and ingenuity, their love of beautiful forms and of architecture, they prefer not to live in the open air and on the bare ground (as they can certainly do), but choose rather to employ their various faculties in building cities and habitations in accordance with their tastes and ideas of convenience.

Once grant that man is provided with a spiritual body after he emerges from his original one—­accept the hypothesis that this body must possess form and sensation, and with sensation, eyes, ears, mouth, taste, and motion—­then you must provide means for that body to exist.  In providing these means you must place him upon a soil capable of producing vegetation, where his intelligence may compound the various articles adapted to his use.

Some individuals enter the spirit world deformed, some feeble in intellect, some incapable of constructing or arranging.  All these must have provision made for them; their wants must be supplied.  The effort to supply want or demand produces a system of exchange or barter.

Many of the inhabitants of the spirit world are both good and kind.  They are spiritualized in their natures, and are influenced by a desire to assist those who are needy.