The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II, page 399 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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I advised you to let it rest. Why should we beat our heads against an obstacle which we can't walk through? Then your liability to influence is against you here as much as your attraction towards such high speculations is in your favour. You have an 'open mind,' yes, but you leave all the doors open, and you let people come in every now and then, and lock them, and keep them locked as long as said people stand by. The teachings of Spiritualism are much like the teachings in the world. There are excellent things taught, and iniquitous things taught. Only the sublime communications are, as far as I know, decidedly absent. Swedenborg directs you to give no more weight to what is said by a spirit-man than by a man in the body, and there's room for the instruction. 'Heralds of Progress' on one side, 'Heralds of Light' on the other, if a right thing is said, 'judge ye.' If infidels are here, there are devout, yes, and very orthodox Christians there.
I beg to say that when I speak of 'old cerements' being put off, I pre-suppose a living body in resurrection. Also, I don't call marriage, for instance, an old cerement. We must distinguish. With regard to the common notion of a 'hell,' as you ask me, I don't believe in it. I don't believe in any such thing as arbitrary reward or punishment, but in consequences and logical results. That seems to me God's way of working. The Scriptural phrases are simply symbolical, it seems to me, and Swedenborg helps you past the symbol. Then as to the Redemption and its mode--let us receive the thing simply. Dr. Adam Clarke, whose piety was never doubted, used to say, 'Vicarious suffering is vicarious nonsense.' Which does not hinder the fact that the suffering of the Lord was necessary, in order that we should not suffer, and that through His work and incarnation His worlds recovered the possibility of good. It comes to the same thing. The manner in which preachers analyse the Infinite, pass the Divine through a sieve, has ceased to be endurable to thinking men. You spea