rtal mind more deviously:--

The belief in anti-Christ: that somebody in the flesh [30]
is the son of God, or is another Christ, or is a spiritually
adopted child, or is an incarnated babe, is the evil one--

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in other words, the one evil--disporting itself with the [1]
subtleties of sin!

Even honest thinkers, not knowing whence they come,
may deem these delusions verities, before they know it,
or really look the illusions in the face. The ages are bur- [5]
dened with material modes. Hypnotism, microbes, X-rays,
and ex-common sense, occupy time and thought; and
error, given new opportunities, will improve them. The
most just man can neither defend the innocent nor detect
the guilty, unless he knows _how_ to be just; and this knowl- [10]
edge demands our time and attention.

The mental stages of crime, which seem to belong to
the latter days, are strictly classified in metaphysics as
some of the many features and forms of what is properly
denominated, in extreme cases, moral idiocy. I visited [15]
in his cell the assassin of President Garfield, and found
him in the mental state called moral idiocy. He had no
sense of his crime; but regarded his act as one of simple
justice, and himself as the victim. My few words touched
him; he sank back in his chair, limp and pale; his flip- [20]
pancy had fled. The jailer thanked me, and said, "Other
visitors have brought to him bouquets, but you have
brought what will do him good."

This mental disease at first shows itself in extreme
sensitiveness; then, in a loss of self-knowledge and of [25]
self-condemnation,--a shocking inability to see one's
own faults, but an exaggerating sense of other people's.
Unless this mental condition be overcome, it ends in a
total loss of moral, intellectual, and spiritual discernment,
and is characterized in this Scripture: "The fool hath [30]
said in his heart, There is no God." This state of mind
is the exemplification of total depravity, and the result

[Page 113.]

of sensuous mind in matter. Mind that is God is not in [1]
matter; and God's presence gives spiritual light, wherein
is no darkness.

If, as is indisputably true, "God is Spirit," and Spirit
is our Father and Mother, and that which it includes is [5]
all that is real and eternal, when evil seems to predomi-
nate and divine light to be obscured, free moral agency
is lost; and the Revelator's vision, that "no man might
buy or sell, save he that had the mark