into the spirit
to serve in a future life as incentives to good.

Thus, the soul is purged from evil in purgatory, and strengthened in good
in the first heaven. In one region the extract of sufferings become
_conscience_ to deter us from doing wrong, in the other region the
quintessence of good is transmuted to _benevolence_ and altruism which are
the basis of all true progress. Moreover, purgatory is far from being a
place of _punishment_, it is perhaps the most beneficent realm in nature,
for _because of purgation we are born innocent_ life after life. The
tendencies to commit the same evil for which we suffered remain with us
and temptations to commit the same wrongs will be placed in our path until
we have consciously overcome the evil here; temptation is not sin,
however, the sin is in yielding.

Among the inhabitants of the invisible world there is one class which
lives a particularly painful life, sometimes for a great many years,
namely, the suicide who tried to play truant from the school of life. Yet
it is not an angry God or a malevolent devil who administers punishment,
but an immutable law which proportions the sufferings differently to each
individual suicide.

We learned previously, when considering the World of Thought, that each
form in this visible world has its archetype there,--a vibrating hollow
mold which emits a certain harmonious sound; that sound attracts and forms
physical matter into the shape we behold, much in the same manner as when
we place a little sand upon a glass plate and rub the edge with a violin
bow, the sand is shaped into different geometrical figures which change as
the sound changes.

The little atom in the heart is the sample and the center around which the
atoms in our body gather. When that is removed at death, the center is
lacking, and although the archetype keeps on vibrating until the limit of
the life has been reached--as also previously explained,--no matter can be
drawn into the hollow shape of the archetype and therefore the suicide
feels a dreadful gnawing pain as if he were hollowed out, a torture which
can only be likened to the pangs of hunger. In his case, the intense
suffering will continue for exactly as many years as he should have lived
in the body. At the expiration of that time, the archetype collapses as it
does when death comes naturally. Then the pain of the suicide ceases, and
he commences his period of purgation as do those who die a natural death