Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Friend of Progress Monthly, Vol. 1: February, 1865
This narrative was composed primarily to fill up the interval of time between the death and resurrection of the Christ, and to account for his presence and work. But it does more than this: it expresses the old belief in the unlimited extent of the Redeemer's mission, as comprehending all souls - the darkened, the diseased, the wicked: it speaks, too, of the infinite tenderness of that mission: it hints at the indefinite and limitless power of Truth: and it suggests the idea that the work of the Redeemer was, after all, simply the release of souls from bondage. The old myth touches the very heart of one of our most noble and beautiful ideas: this, namely, that the souls of wicked men are simply souls in bondage, and that the redeemer from bond age is Light. All preaching is, therefore, to Spirits in Prison; that is, to spirits bound, limited, shut up in narrow confines, inclosed within mils, held in hard duress by some Prince of Darkness. Spirits - there would be no use in preaching to them at all, if they were not. It would be merest absurdity to preach to pieces of machinery, or masses of organization, or the most exquisite arrange ments of nerve and tissue. Spirits - rational beings, with will, affections, intelligence, faculties through which ideas and in?uences can get into them; with capacity for develop ment and growth; with an individuality of their own, which defines them against every other individuality, and a personality which enables them to share what is common to human nature. Spirits - not lumps of clay nor forms of dust, however wonderfully and beautifully compacted. Spirits - whose very ability to conceive of spirit gives them that character which we call eternal and immortal, and whose exercise of that ability sets an infinite God on the throne of the universe, bathes the world with heavenly in?uences, and Opens the prospect of an endless life.
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