suppose the difference between the present
embodied and the future disembodied state to be so vast that the
conditions of the latter cannot be intelligibly illustrated by the
analogies of the former. It is not to be expected that the human
soul will ever be absolutely independent of time and space,
literally transcending them, but only relatively so as compared
with its earthly predicament.

39 Bulwer, King Arthur, book xi.

For, as an able thinker and writer a philosopher of the
Swedenborgian school, too has said, "The conception of a mind
absolutely sundered from all connection with space is a mere
pretence which words necessarily repudiate."

The soul on the hypothesis that there is a soul is now in the
body. Evidently, on leaving the body, it must either be nowhere,
and that is annihilation, which the vehement totality of our
thought denies; or everywhere, and that implies infinity, the loss
of finite being in boundless Deity, a conclusion which we know of
nothing to warrant; or somewhere, and that predicates a surviving
individuality related to surrounding externals, which is the
prophesied and satisfactory result in which we rest in faith,
humbly confessing our ignorance as to all the minutia. It does not
necessarily follow from this view, however, that the soul is
limited to a fixed region in space. It may have the freedom of the
universe. More wonders, and sublimer than mortal fancies have ever
suspected, are waiting to be revealed when we die:

"For this life is but being's first faint ray, And heaven on
heaven make up God's dazzling day."

We are here living unconsciously engirt by another universe than
the senses can apprehend, thinly veiled, but real, and waiting for
us with hospitable invitation. "What are those dream like and
inscrutable thoughts which start up in moments of stillness,
apparently as from the deeps, like the movement of the leaves
during a silent night, in prognostic of the breeze that has yet
scarce come, if not the rustlings of schemes and orders of
existence near though unseen?" Perchance the range of the abode
and destiny of the soul after death is all immensity. The
interstellar spaces, which we usually fancy are barren deserts
where nonentity reigns, may really be the immortal kingdom
colonized by the spirits who since the beginning of the creation
have sailed from the mortal shores of all planets. They may be the
crowded aisles of the universal temple trod by bright throng