body wherewith to gratify his appetites_.
The drunkard craves drink, in fact, far more than he did in this life, but
has no stomach which can contain liquor and cause chemical combustion
necessary to bring about the state of intoxication in which he delights.
He may and does enter saloons, where he interpolates his body into the
body of a physical drunkard, so that he may obtain his desires at second
hand as it were, he will incite his victim to drink more and more. Yet
there is no true satisfaction. He sees the full glass upon the counter but
his spirit hand is unable to lift it. He suffers tortures of Tantalus
until in time he realizes the impossibility of gratifying his base desire.
Then he is free to go on so far as that vice is concerned. He has been
purged from that evil without intervention of an angry deity or a
conventional devil with hell's flames and pitchfork to administer
punishment, but under the immutable law that as we sow so shall we reap,
he has suffered exactly according to his vice. If his craving for drink
was of a mild nature, he would scarcely miss the liquor which he cannot
there obtain. If his desires were strong and he simply lived for drink, he
would suffer veritable tortures of hell without need of actual flames.
Thus the pain experienced in eradication of his vice would be exactly
commensurate with the energy he had expended upon contracting the habit,
as the force wherewith a falling stone strikes the earth is proportionate
to the energy expended in hurling it upwards into the air.

Yet it is not the aim of God to "get even;" _love_ is higher than _law_
and in His wonderful mercy and solicitude for our welfare He has opened
the way of repentance and reform whereby we may obtain forgiveness of sin,
as taught by the Lord of Love: the Christ. Not indeed contrary to law, for
His laws are immutable, but by application of a higher law, whereby we
accomplish here that which would otherwise be delayed until death had
forced the day of reckoning. The method is as follows:

In our explanation concerning the sub-conscious memory we noted that a
record of every act, thought and word is transmitted by air and ether into
our lungs, thence to the blood, and finally inscribed upon the tablet of
the heart:--a certain little _seedatom_, which is thus the book of
Recording Angels. It was later explained how this panorama of life is
etched into the desire body and forms the basis of retribution after
death. Wh