_Disembodied._--“In this regard you were right, as an expounder.”
_Mahomet._--“In permitting polygamy and even concubinage to some, I reflected that as marriage would not be suitable or convenient or possible to a number of men, I would be making a needful, wise and saving provision for surplus women. The deprivation of wine, too, rendered it more salutary; man will have one, and if he can, both. My system was, also, designed to diminish promiscuous prostitution.”
_Disembodied._--“Clever excuse! But how will you defend the propagation of your creed by the sword?”
_Mahomet._--“Mankind, so generally stolid or perverse in untoward ignorance or selfishness, will usually require more or less coercion in some shape, to be aroused into useful animation and effort, and to the pursuit of good and happiness. The sword, like necessity, stimulates; it is at times a great vivifier. It is even, occasionally, justice on a large and peculiar scale; it is for man and nations, what the rod is for the child.”
_Disembodied._--“Clever pretext, again! But you seem _now_ to think that you were a better giver of law than of religion.”
_Mahomet._--“I was not a Prophet. I was right in but one religious dogma: the declaration of the one God. And of Him, man is to himself the most direct and proximate revelation. _Know thyself!_ It is both duty and instruction. Come! sister spirits would confer with thee.”
_Disembodied American._--“But, oh, I would see more of _her_ whom I met to-night.”
_Mahomet._--“She is your _affinity_; and when you are both freed from the earthly, you will abide together on some Olympus in the Illimitable. Let us to the Seventh Heaven!”
They sweep upward and onward, and on their passage see a vast and bright globe, (a star or sun,) many times larger than the Earth. There they see the souls of the most ignorant and obtuse of the dead, in their second stage of existence or ordeal of improvement. It is the first Heaven. They proceed on by other worlds--all abodes of Spiritual Progression, and arrive at the seventh Heaven.
_Mahomet._--“The more favored and self-elevating of Earth when they die, are at once transferred to the sphere most suited to them--some few even reaching the sixth Heaven, at the outset upon eternity. The seventh Heaven is the _first_ abode of achieved Goodness and translucent Reason in the initial state of perfection. After and beyond that, these become identical with Knowledge, which I believe is eternally acquisitive and expansive. Here is my attainment through centuries. I began my after-death career in the third Heaven. Zoroaster his in the fourth. Confucius was permitted to pass the first, because of his great mind and good intent; but he was assigned to the second to learn there was a God and a Creator. Your travelling companion, who was never mortal, is beyond me, and I know not his origin. Here I will show you the most glorified women, who have come originally from earth.”